A media gateway facilitates the transmission of data or information from one wireless device to another wireless device. For this purpose, the media gateway initiates a media session between two or more wireless devices for the transmission of information. If one wireless device is in the coverage area of one media gateway and the second wireless device is located in the coverage area of another media gateway, then the media session is initiated between the two media gateways through a media gateway controller. This media gateway controller is responsible for setting up the media session between the media gateways.
There are several methods, known in the art, for setting up the media session between the media gateways. In one of the known methods, a media gateway controller requests two media gateways to set up a media session, and then initiates the media session by allocating media processor resources in the two media gateways.
However, the known methods for setting up the media session utilize a significant amount of operator network bandwidth between the two media gateways and the media gateway controller while allocating media processor resources. Further, in a typical media session set-up, the data or voice is transmitted from the first media gateway to the second media gateway through the media gateway controller. This uses a significant amount of operator networking bandwidth and at the same time increases cost of transmission.
Moreover, the methods known for the setting up of a media session do not offer the detection of an existing failure in the continuity of the media path. The media session cannot be set up if there is a fault in any of the media gateways involved in a media session or in the communication network or if the media path continuity fails. A fault in the media path continuity results in ‘dead-air’ transmission or failed media delivery. Some of the known methods for detecting fault in the media path continuity detect the fault only up to the network layer in the media gateway. Faults existing in any of the transport layer, session layer, presentation layer or application layer cannot be detected.
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